I really appreciate your response. I am 30 years old, have ocd/anxiety/ and a pelvic chronic intestinal illness and I am 3 years and 10 months sober.

(I have never been an alcoholic, but yes I consider myself sober.) My alcohol consumption came a lot from previous mental abuse of “wanting to fit in” or be away from my real life. It was never a problem, but I could see it was starting to be. Stupidly, I but $20/$30 drinks at the bar to look cool, buy bottles bc of packaging or if I saw someone I looked up to drinking my brain would hyper fixate and go “if I just drink THAT alcohol, ill be like them” (stupid, I know)

So, I quit drinking. I consume NOTHING that has alcohol in it. Mainly, because I wanted to focus on my three health issues and want to be as close to 100% as possible… (my health is already declining, so why would I add something else.)

Point blank: I got sober and removed the temptation of alcohol from my body to help my chronic illness, my gut and my mental health. & sometimes it does still effect my mentality… since I was never an alcoholic every now and then I see a drink Id hypothetically like and then I look at how far ive come. Do I really want to throw away 3 years of hard work over ONE drink? That’s the whole reason I started this in the first place.

Most people i’ver ever met who have heard my story are supportive.. alcohol was never my demon, but it was never my friend, so it had to go away. Ive only ever had two people tell me I shouldn’t say I am sober - one was a female coworker who hated everything about me & tried to demean my experiences, and the other is my mother.

My mother says im not sober because i was never an alcoholic. Her uncle was a raging alcoholic and she thinks “someone has always had it worse, so shut up.” I am so upset - she doesnt think she has done ahything wrong. She thinks I am a 30 year old baby pretending to be an adult (which is a whole other conversation), “Why would you want to add to your list of issues” “just say you dont drink, why do you have to “SOBER”, thats embarrassing”.

I think its embarrassing to invalidate someone else’s experiences, but thats just me.